Four Converts You Need to Hear About
It takes courage to convert to Judaism. It takes insane courage to convert to Judaism during a freaking Crusade!
The approach of Yom Kippur put me in a religious mood. While working on ensuring I didnāt get the recommended eight hours of sleep by reading random articles on Judaism, I came upon a video of the oldest Jewish sheet music ever discovered.Ā You should listen to it. Itās beautiful.
This song was written by ObadiahĀ the Convert in the 12th century.Ā
Obadiah was born Giovanni da Oppido in Italy to a noble Norman family in 1070. He was ordained as a priest, but converted to Judaism in 1102 and moved to Egypt. Most of his work (and the man wrote A LOT) was discovered in the Cairo Genizah.
Obadiahās conversion was inspired by Andraeas,Ā another Italian who converted to Judaism around 1066 (a Boomer to his Gen Z).Ā
Who was Andraeas? He wasĀ the freaking archbishop of Bari!Ā
An archbishop in medieval Europe converting to Judaisn and moving to the Middle East is as crazy as a Hamas member converting to Christianity and defecting to Israel.Ā
Hey, I didnāt say impossibleā¦
Hereās what Obadiah wrote about Andreas:
It happened at that time regarding Archbishop Andraeas the high priest in the city of Bari, that the Lord put the love of the Torah of Moses into his heart. He forsook his land, his priesthood and all his glory and came to the city of Constantinople, where he circumcised the flesh of his foreskin.
There passed over him sufferings and hardships; he arose and fled for his life from before the uncircumcised seeking to slay him; but the Lord God of Israel saved him from their hands in purity. Many went up after him and, observing his deeds, they did as he had done ā they also entered the covenant of the living God.
Then went the man to the metropolis of Egypt and dwelled there until the day of his death. The name of the king of Egypt in those days was al-Mustansir, and the name of his vezir was Badr al-Jamali.
The report concerning Archbishop Andraeas reached unto the entire land of Lombardy and unto the sages of Greece and the sages of Rome, which is the place of the throne of the kingdom of Edom. The Greek sages and all the sages of Edom were ashamed when they heard the report about him.
Reading more about these extraordinary pair led me to the stories of two more converts from noble background whoāve scandalized Europe at the time:
Wecelinus was a cleric in the service of Conrad I, Duke of Carinthia. He converted to Judaism in 1005 and went to live with the Jews of Mainz. From there, he publicly polemicized against Christianity. This worried the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire enough to appoint a cleric to refute Wecelinus. Wow, getting paid to argue about religion with someone hundreds of miles away, a dream come true for many of us!
However, there was an even earlier scandalous convert. In 838, the Frankish deacon Bodo converted to Judaism, fled the court of Louis the Pious, and settled in Muslim Spain under the new name of Eleazar. While there, he engaged in a theological debate with Ćlvaro of CĆ³rdoba, a Jewish convert to Christianity.
Interestingly, all those converts were highly educated men from the social elites. I guess one of the dangers of reading a lot is that you may end up becoming a Jew.
Speaking of reading a lot of Jewish stuff, during my online wandering,Ā I came upon a very nice project.Ā Itās a weekly Torah portion (parasha) delivered in the form of a newsletter with easy to understand explanations and commentary. Weāre just a couple weeks away from Simchat Torah (when the Torah reading cycle starts anew) so now would be a great time to join if youāre interested.
